


Rose Hork

by leeklustre



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Geese, Gen, canon-typical abstraction, human emotions - illogical/confusing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:16:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23543746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leeklustre/pseuds/leeklustre
Summary: Kozue and geese, but vague
Relationships: Kaoru Kozue/Kaoru Miki (implied)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 9
Collections: Robot Rainbow 2020





	Rose Hork

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HandmaidenOfHorror](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HandmaidenOfHorror/gifts).



There was the time that the swimming pool of Ohtori turned into a lake. Flotation devices, scattered across its surface by some almost-artistic hand, flattened into water lily pads. Lilies, themselves, snaked up around the pads from the bottom. Kozue, ordinarily an indifferent swimmer, took a step in and found herself at home. The edges of the lake shimmered in mirage. When she ducked her head under her hair flattened itself against her skull, shining like pinfeathers. She crawled slow laps, wobbling circles, towards the centre.

"Kozue. Kozue, you can't stay here," Miki called from the shadows. No, the shallows. It was still day. Had she - or he - thought differently?

"Why not?" The light beat against the surface of the water. She pointed it out to him: "Look, a nest." She struck out to it and found five eggs, sun-baked. Now that they were here, they needed her.

Here's a story: they hatch together, girl and geese. They gain the shore together, and never again will one be threatened without the others mounting a defence.

Here's a story: brother and sister pressed together in an empty nest, geese cackling on the shore, feather and flesh entwined. (She helps him out, flapping, ungainly; It's Miki who's bleeding.)

She came back to herself. She was floating on her back, movements still as economic as a frog's, if only she could figure out where she was going. Anthy's face swam into view. "What do you want," said Kozue, aware only from this perspective that the Rose Bride could want things for herself.

The Rose Bride laughed. There wasn't any point to asking, not if you were Kozue. Kozue didn't resent the inevitable.

"Don't you want them back?"

Oh. The geese. Kozue followed the sound of them to the shore. There were geese carrying Shiori off into the sky. There were geese pecking Juri, or trying to, as she fended them off with a needle-thin blade. There were geese pecking Akio with considerably more success, as he winced artistically away from their blows. Kozue paused to appreciate this, and felt odd about it; there was no way someone as distressed and distracted as Akio could be watching her with just as much amusement as she was watching him. There was a goose carrying a basket, and without even looking at the bulges at its sides, without even considering the ungainly, weighted way the goose waddled, Kozue knew that this basket had still more eggs. 

"Mine," said Kozue. "You're mine," and the geese turned to her, tuned to the key of her voice. For a moment she saw them rushing her, wings and beaks and feet all separate strikes, and a flinch ran through her, but she didn't take back what she'd said, and Ohtori didn't punish her for her presumption.

Behind her - to the right of her? To the left? Down at the bottom of the swimming pool? - Anthy smiled. Ohtori would let her have what it could snatch from her later.

Kozue didn't care. Kozue stretched her wings.

**Author's Note:**

> I would love for someone else to write 'Kozue rescues some goose eggs/ goslings and then they grow up to do terrorizing goose things'. As you see, I was too lazy.


End file.
